Nanostructured Li-ion Batteries for Electric Cars 153
schliz writes "Researchers at the Delft University of Technology are developing nanostructured batteries that are expected to deliver more usage between charges, and shorter charge/discharge times, to mobile consumers within the next five years. The batteries will improve electric and hybrid vehicles, researchers say."
The first of many stories (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm always a bit skeptical of such items till I understand how likely it is to cause a fire in my garage while I'm sleeping or when accelerating away from a stop light. New tech is great, but means not a lot till tested in the real world.
With battery technology, the higher the density, the higher the chances of uncontrolled energy release. When it's safe and fairly cheap, then I'll be really interested.
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Re:The first of many stories (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The first of many stories (Score:5, Informative)
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If the electric car really is the held back panacea some nut jobs make it out to be then hobbyists would be building them and driving them everywhere. Exxon may be able to influence GM (not that I think they are) but do you think they're knocking down the doors of everybody with an arc welder and a couple volt meters in their garage?
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Re:The first of many stories (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably not. Ultra-capacitors [maxwell.com] will be hugely superior to batteries; more charge / recharge cycles by orders of magnitude, much higher current capabilities on both charge and discharge, environmentally friendly. They're just a little bit below total battery energy levels on a by weight / volume comparison right now. If and when they cross that line, batteries will become old-tech for applications like cars.
Re:The first of many stories (Score:4, Insightful)
I also don't buy the "environmentally friendly" nature of them as well. While they may be better than NiCd batteries or the more traditional Lead-H2SO4 batteries in terms of what they will do to the environment, you can't call them a perfect solution either. The metals used in the construction of these types of capacitors have their own kind of impact on the environment just like any manufactured product.
If a "Moore's Law" were to apply to battery capacity, instead of the (presumed) 18 month half-life of procesor density and speed, it will be more like 15-20 years instead for improved energy density. While not something to ignore, you don't have to run out and buy a new battery pack every year just to keep up with changes in the battery industry. This is very hard science, using multiple meanings of that term.
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Re:I think you missed his point entirely... (Score:2)
Recycle all of the silicon you want. You're still making a heck of an impact turning raw materials into a purified silicon wafer. Same goes with any highly processed item. Energy into fabrication of materials = harm to the environment in general... I think this is what he meant by impact from the specialized metals in these caps.
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Re:The first of many stories (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they're getting very close, and right now, there are projects projecting power densities three orders of magnitude higher than batteries, in the 100 KW/kg range. [mit.edu] So I don't think the current state of affairs (batteries > ultracaps) is going to obtain for very much longer.
What? ultracaps have the same discharge curve as any capacitor does; the voltage drops very smoothly as the energy in the cap is dispensed. "Dealing with it" is nothing tricky at all, the technology has been in place for this for literally decades. Modern switching power supplies are *very* efficient at creating constant voltage outputs from all manner of raggedy inputs across a wide range of input voltages, if and when required. They can be engineered to be reliable and very long lasting. This is simply a non-problem. Also, ultracaps can absorb energy (for example, from regenerative braking) at a much higher rate, leading to less wasted energy. We have all manner of high-current switching devices with such low on-resistances these days as to be utterly amazing to an old-timer like me.
You're just hand-waving here. Recycling is one issue, toxicity is another, corrosion is another, and all of them are far less critical for ultracaps - not to mention that the lifetime of an ultracap is so much longer (up to a quarter of a milling charge/discharge cycles, or more) than that of a battery, so it is that much more seldom that recycling becomes an issue. It really isn't reasonable to say that ultracaps pose the same kind of environmental issues that batteries do. They don't. Perfect? No. But what is?
Yes, but (a) ultracaps aren't batteries at all, and (b) ultracaps are increasing in capacity at a prodigious rate, where batteries are not. Mind you, they're coming from behind, but they're a brand new technology with tons of new research driving the improvements, while batteries are not new and many, many avenues have been tried and abandoned for increasing battery capacity for exactly the reason you cite: It is hard to improve the current battery designs.
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"milling" s/b "million" in the paragraph about recycling, my apologies.
Re:The first of many stories (Score:4, Insightful)
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I consider 1/2 lion capacity to be a very significant line in the sand; as I said, there is much going on in the field, and it is both new and expanding rapidly. My original post was clear: I said "probably", and I meant it. We're not there yet. But we certainly aren't "huge problems", as you characterize them. We're in the same zone, same order of magnitude, and honestly, I have every expectation that ultracaps will come out on top. They're just too much better on too many fronts, and they're so close in
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The main reason from a consumer standpoint is charge time. You can fully charge a dead ultracap in minutes. An experience, timewise, similar to filling your tank with gas. It takes hours to charge a battery. If you're 1/2 way to Aunt Minnie's, and you need a charge, you'll have to stop for quite a while with a system that uses batteries for the bulk of the power storage. There's a lifetime issue as well; 300,000 full charge-discharge cycles for an ultracap, a fraction of that for batteries
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All I can say to this is, I hope you're wrong. I have no counter argument to offer.
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The main problem I see with this is the very short lifetime of batteries as compared to ultracaps. There are some efficiency issues as well; batteries lose energy due to a relatively high internal resistance during charge and discharge cycles. Ultracaps don't, at least, the loss is orders of magnitude lower. This is one of the factors that allows ultracaps to charge so much faster as well.
6wh/KG for ultracaps vs 120wh/KG for lithium. (Score:2)
Don't confuse power density with energy density. Power density is how fast you can discharge and almost a non-issue with any technology.
Energy density is how much actual energy you have stored and is the key factor, that ultracaps are behind on by an order of magnitude (20 times currently).
If all the theoretical projections make it into practice ultracaps will only halfway catch up with lithiums garden variety lithiums that e
No: 60wh/KG for ultracaps vs 120wh/KG for lithium. (Score:2)
No; you misread the article. It said that current commercial DLC's were at 6Wh/kg; then it went on to say that the technology in the paper offered 60Wh/kg, which is 1/2 LION, not 1/20th. Also 300,000 charge cycles. You just needed to read one paragraph further. I encourage you to do so.
The paper is theoretical, not expirmental. (Score:2)
In theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice they aren't.
Realize they are talking about a theoretical order of magnitude improvement in energy density. I would love it if true, but often such things never see the light of day when rubber meets the road.
Nowhere has
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As I said in m
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Robert, your post is so filled with misconceptions I don't even know where to start. Antimatter is completely, totally, irrelevant. Diesel and gas are irrelevant because the idea here is to get off of petrochemicals as fuels. You're wrong about recharges; ultracaps can, and do, recharge as advertised. You're wrong about power sources - current can be stored locally, just as gasoline and diesel can (the "fueling station" can pull from the utility at all times, including when it isn't providing current to it
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You mentioned three things. (1) Range, 600 miles. This is more often quoted at 300 miles for a passenger vehicle. UCs are not there yet, but they are within reasonable distance of catching it. I again predict 3-5 years.
(2) Refueling time of ten minutes. UCs can do this at home or on the road. Not a problem. You keep mentioning this and I suspect you don't understand
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If you have an ultracap I can purchase right now that has the energy density of 1/2 the equivalent of a Li-ion battery, give me the link or your phone number (or that of the business selling them) that I can go to and purchase the thing. Seriously. I've heard all kinds of bluster about this and I would like to see one. Better yet if I can get one in a form factor equivalent to one of my existing batteries, but I wouldn't mind ju
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Yes, that's exactly right. You'll be able to move them from vehicle to vehicle. At 300,000 charges, they'd last over 800 years if you recharged them once a day (which is a lot more often than most users probably would, even at the currently projected 1/2 LION capacity.) Also, the materials in them aren't nearly as toxic as, for instance, lead and sulphuric acid are, so they will probably be easier and safer to recycle, though you can never be certain - sometimes industrial processes can bring "unfriendly"
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Re:The first of many stories (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:The first of many stories (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The first of many stories (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, sounds great, until you realize that gasoline (petrol) has 45 MJ per KILOGRAM - the same order of magnitude as coal, 10 times as much as TNT, and over 80 times that of the best batteries.
The reason? Things like coal and gasoline don't carry a heavy oxidizer with them. "Air-breathing" fuels will always be better than "rocket" type fuels for transportation because of the weight and storage expense of carrying both the oxidizer and the fuel on the vehicle. That's a substantial feature for "battery-like" technology to overcome for everyone who is not a short-distance commuter.
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That was a common sentiment back in the early 90's when portable devices started to take off in a big way. It proved to be a stubborn problem that tended to ignore Moore's regulations and follow Murphy's code of natural conduct. After Murphy turned up the pundits started hyping fuel cells, that also proved to be a stubborn problem with no respect for Moore
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The thing about revolutions is that you don't usually see them coming.
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Oh wait...
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You know what has a really high energy density (on the order of 50-100 times [wikipedia.org] that of a Li-ion battery)? Gasoline.
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Driving back, however...
Super capacitors (Score:2)
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And before anyone gives me any "You could have replacable battery packs! You could
Lithium-ion is Adequate (Score:4, Interesting)
The little two-seat Tesla Roadster with a 250-mile range has been demonstrated, and multiple companies are now working on more practical four-door cars which can have a 200-mile driving range. This doesn't require any breakthroughs, and it will get you "to the next town" with very few exceptions.
The critical areas that need improvement are cost and service life. Tesla Motors are projecting a life span of five years or 100,000 miles for their carefully managed battery pack. That's much better than the two years you stated. I think with the research that is ongoing, service life will further improve over the next several years. (And GM are betting on this happening to make their Chevy Volt concept workable.)
I think the requirement that cars be "refueled quickly" is overstated. The longer the range becomes, the less you need to refuel or recharge it quickly. With a dependable 200-mile driving range between charges, and the ability to recharge overnight at home, most people won't need to stop at a charging station mid-trip all that often. If you can get the range up to about 500 miles, then rapid charging would become moot for the great majority of people. (At least speaking for myself, I don't think I've ever driven more than 300 miles in a day's time, and I wouldn't want to drive more than 500 in a day if I could possibly avoid it.)
I have looked into flywheel storage technology. It looked promising several years ago, but battery technology advanced faster and has left flywheels behind. Notable problems you have with flywheels are: energy density, energy losses while the flywheel is spinning idle, and safety concerns about its failure modes.
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The Tesla Roadster starts at $92,000 which is much less than other exotic sports cars it can run with -- Porsches and Ferraris. It's not intended to be "basic transportation" and any attempt to compare its price tag with cars that are basic transportation is pointless.
The batteries don't lay down and die at the end of five years. By then the estimate is that they'll be reduced to about 80% of their original capacity -- which means even a "worn o
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What kind of fly wheel are you talking about? Scale? Materials? Stored in vacuum? What kind of mass? Which plane does it spin in? How does it cope with effects of the coreolis forces?
And of course you know it would have to be stationary? Having a fly wheel with any decent level of energy storage would also have a huge resistance against turning!!
Just to throw some numbers in the air... lets say you had a 0.2m thick 1m radius disk of lead, it would weigh approximately 70
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lets say it is spinning at 120rpm (pretty fast given how heavy this thing is)
As you elude to, the energy of a flywheel is (to a good approximation): $1/2 I \omega^2$ where I is the moment of inertia (not the mass) and omega the angular speed. The mass can be surprisingly low, if it's all concentrated away from the axis of rotation. With modern materials and engineering one can obtain very high angular speeds.
The Glenn Flywheel Development Team designed, built and successfully operated the new G2 flywheel to 41,000 RPM on September 2nd, 2004 [nasa.gov]
There's an overview of this technology with links in the Wikipedia article on flywheel energy storage [wikipedia.org]. It's not a new idea, having been used in the 50s to power busses i
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Really, this isn't crazyh
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Demand helps, but physics (and return on investment) has limits. If technological progress (like we experienced with semiconductors) depended only on demand, then the energy market would have experienced a revolution long ago. Instead, we're still using fossil fuels and copper wire -- technologies that are at least a century old. We also still have cancer, AIDS, people dying of the flu, I can still
Patented to Death? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Or is it the 30-80 Wh/kg?
And the long recharge times.
And the cold weather performance. (specifically: the lack thereof)
But hey: NiMH's cheap, right?
Which probably explains why so many hybrids have NiMH battery packs. (Toyota Prius, Saturn Aura, etc)
So I'm not sure how you can intimate that Chevron is suppressing NiMH technology in cars, when it's already there in all the applications that don't rely solely upon the battery pack. (i.e. hybrids)
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If Chevron's patents were the only stumbling block, someone would have worked around it. Companies design around each other's patents as a matter of course.
NiMH technology is simply fundamentally unsuited to BEVs and Chevron's patents didn't change that.
If Chevron had licensed, maybe their NiMH batteries would be a bit better. But that still wouldn't make them good enough to run BEVs and even without Chevron's licenses NiMH was
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Statistics from Wikipedia
Lithium Ion Batteries:
Battery specifications
Energy/weight 160 Wh/kg
Energy/size 270 Wh/L
Power/weight 1800 W/kg
Charge/discharge efficiency 99.9%[1]
Energy/consumer-price 2.8 Wh/US$
Self-discharge rate 5%-10%/month
Time durability (24-36) months
Cycle durability 1200 cycles
Nominal Cell Voltage 3.6 V
Charge temperature interval
Nickel Metal Hydride batteries
Battery specifications
Energy/weight 30-80 Wh/kg
Energy/size 140-300 Wh/L
Power/weight 250-1000 W/kg
Charge/d
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Your inadequate argument turned obnoxious for no reason. I'm no "arts student". You're an asshole, and a wrong asshole, too.
Goodbye.
it's explosively fast (Score:5, Funny)
I believe Sony has perfected the battery with the absolute fastest discharge time. I don't see how this can compete.
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What's wrong with... (Score:3, Informative)
They have good energy density and can deliver considerable voltage for their size, and we've been using them for a very long time. It seems to me that perhaps someone should try researching different formulas for the acid and the chemistry of the plates.
Sure, they're heavy and there's always the danger of a rupture but they are good at doing what batteries are supposed to do, storing and releasing electricity.
LK
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Re:What's wrong with... (Score:5, Informative)
Lead-acid batteries [wikipedia.org]
Energy/weight 30-40 Wh/kg
Energy/size 60-75 Wh/L
Power/weight 180 W/kg
Charge/discharge efficiency 70%-92%
Energy/consumer-price 7(sld)-18(fld) Wh/US$ [1]
Self-discharge rate 3%-20%/month [2]
Time durability 6 months
Cycle durability 500-800 cycles
Nominal Cell Voltage 2.0 V
Lithium-ion batteries [wikipedia.org]
Energy/weight 160 Wh/kg
Energy/size 270 Wh/L
Power/weight 1800 W/kg
Charge/discharge efficiency 99.9%[1]
Energy/consumer-price 2.8 Wh/US$
Self-discharge rate 5%-10%/month
Time durability (24-36) months
Cycle durability 1200 cycles
Nominal Cell Voltage 3.6 V
Firefly Energy (Score:3, Interesting)
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Several things (Score:5, Informative)
Effectively it is about a 35AH battery with a total energy delivery of 12V * 35AH = 420WH. The equivalent LiIon batteries would weigh, I guess, around 4kg with packaging. As a result, lead acid batteries are unsuited to any automotive use except those where they can substitute for ballast, such as boats and powered wheelchairs where the batteries help lower the centre of gravity.
Quite a lot of research has gone into the lead/peroxide cycle, especially given the constant desire to make them smaller and more reliable. It hasn't been hugely successful. You can have high discharge rates and long life at the expense of much more weight and much higher cost, but the nature of the cycle itself (the production and destruction of large amounts of lead peroxide) makes it hard to design a system that can handle many charge/discharge cycles without very large and heavy storage arrays.
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You can make them somewhat more robust for that sort of operation, but it involves compromises that don't really go over well when you put them in a car.
Re:What's wrong with...your backyard. (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.semissourian.com/story/1195543.html [semissourian.com]
Enivornmentally freindly? I guess so if it's not in your backyard.
Uh huh, right after the plugin hybrid (Score:2)
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electricity - alas (Score:4, Insightful)
The same was true for cars. Many would think cars were always powered by diesel/petrol, but nothing is further from the truth. In fact, there were many fuels used to drive cars when they were first developped, and electricity-driven cars were actually a rather considerable percentage of cars. But then petrol came and took it over for reasons that are unclear (it has been speculated that it might had something to do with the sound, strangely enough; it made for a more impressing 'look at me, here I am!' - not unimportant to the late-victorian elite of that time. Heck, even today half of the gadgets are bought to show off (blu-ray, HD-DVD, anyone?). In that time, battery- or oildriven cars were in fact ahead of the petrol ones, but that rapidly changed the more popular the petrol-using cars became. In a few decades, the rest was all but gone.
If that hadn't happend, it is obvious we would be FAR ahead of our current state of developement where batteries and electricity-storage is concerned (just like petrol-injection has come a long way since the 19thy century). Just imagine the state of technology now on the same scale as petrol has improved, and all what we invent now (including the nano-tubes) would probably have been developed ages ago. It would have led to efficiencies and yields we can only dream of today. And also imagine the impact it would have had on other areas; a lot less - or none at all - CO2 from cars (and maybe the petrol-industry as a whole would not have reached the peak it has today) and all the problems associated with that would not exist (maybe even les wars)! (Arguably, one would - maybe - have had a environmental problems with acids and such, from the batteries; in that respect, vegetable oil would have been best, perhaps.)
It's funny (well...) to think how one little thing in our history can lead to such huge (and possibly devastating) consequences for humanity more then a century later.
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So ridiculous that you can't refute his claim? (Score:2)
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Re:electricity - alas (Score:4, Insightful)
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The Victorian-elite argument was made by a historian, and I'm not completely convinced by it neither (at least, not as sole cause). It doesn't explain the vegetable oil-driven cars went away, for instance.
That said, back in the 19th century, a lot of other fuels were used to drive the first cars, and had we gone one way or another, our future might have been completely a
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It was actually simple economics. Vegetable oil was/is more expensive. Gasoline ended up being the cheapest fuel for the performance. Electric couldn't handle the distances even a moderate tank afforded for a gasoline engine.
Even today, it takes a 500-1000 pounds of batteries to equal the energy of a ga
In about 5 years (Score:2)
A123 competitors already on the market? (Score:3, Informative)
the A123 process is much more resilient wrt to abuse: you can run them down completely unlike LiPo or lead-acid, the stand overcharging much better, and if punctured they don't go up in flames. The company rates their cells as being able to deliver 2000 cycles, which is much more than lipo, NiMH, NiCad or Lead-acid.
And as far as I know, they have no ties to Delft University, but I have not read TFA yet...
They are here [a123systems.com].
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LiPo(Lithium polymer, it's what's making laptops go up in flames the last few years). LiPo has the highest energy density, but is very unsafe when punctured in a crash(or when overcharged)
You must be thinking of Li-Ion. Li-Ion uses a flammable organic solvent as the electrolyte, while Li-Po uses a salt held in a solid non-flammable polymer. Li-Ion is usually used for higher-current applications like laptop computers, while Li-Po is usually used in low-current applications like mobile phones. The exploding laptops used Li-Ion batteries.
They're not the only ones... (Score:3, Informative)
In traditional Li-ion cells, a big wear factor is that the anode can form a parasitic battery with the electrical contact, causing the terminal to eventually wear out, faster as you approach full cycling the battery. Heat is also a factor, in both terminals and the full cell... the higher internal resistance of the Li-ion vs. NiMH (or better still, NiCAD) limits peak power, and also increases the risk of damage or, particularly in quesitonably made cells, explosions.
Dramatic improvements in both of these are necessary to enable practical (in a commerical sense) pure electric vehicles (BEV). There's no conspiracy necessary... traditional NiMH cells are a problem for full electrics.. which the actual reason none of these cars have been successful. Not to mention the expense... the Toyota EV-RAV4, for example, cost $42,000 and gave you about 100 miles on a charge.. and that with Toyota still selling them at a loss (as they did in the early days of the Prius, too).
In a hybrid, the batteries are only partially cycled (my 2003 Prius runs the NiMH cells over 40% of their capacity range; Toyota extended this to about 60% on the models starting in 2004), and that keeps them very long lived. Natrually, better batteries make a better hybrid, but the fact my Toyota can only go about 2-3 miles on a full charge doesn't impact its general use; the issues around battery technology today make the BEV a small niche product.
But the energy density is just too low even full cycling NiMH to make a BEV with mass appeal... most people would demand at least 200-300 miles of range, charging times on-the-road similar to that of petrol fueling (not the minimum of 15-30 minutes you'll have with today's cells), and long life (full cycling NiMH, they're good for about 500-1000 charges).
Once you have a higher density cell that doesn't wear out and can be charged in under 5 minutes, full EVs will be practical enough for a mainstream automaker to POSSIBLY launch a full production car, not just an experiment. This is critical technology for improving hybrids as well, and keep in mind that all practical FCEVs will also be hybrids (fuel cells suck at peak power demands, they like to be slow and steady, so you need a battery or supercapacitor to enable the peaks).
Just one small technical problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's assume an average cruising consumption of about 15kw for a small car. At 60mph with a 300 mile range, that's 75kwh. To charge those cells in 5 minutes, assuming an 80% efficiency, will need 75 * 12 * 1.25 =~ 1.1 Megawatts. At 440V, even with a 3-phase charger, that's over 1000 amps. At 11KV it's a more reasonable 100A, but the weight of the inverter gear and the shielded connector in the car is considerable and you are going to spend rather more than 5 minutes padlocking the interlocks and cross checking before and after charge. At 440V the main issue will be the weight of the cables. Three cores of around 400mm cross section each are rather heavy.
It's possible to imagine a world in which fuel stations supply exchange cells, but given the natural nervousness of most drivers when close to empty, it's unlikely to be practical or cost effective.
The model is wrong. You have to imagine a world in which car parks have charging stations that charge at reasonable rates, as do hotels and houses. You will need a general beefing up of the electricity distribution network, and you will need plenty of nuclear, solar and wind energy sources. And people will have to plan maybe a little further ahead than they do at present. Long trips will mandate an overnight stop. Probably a good thing as the only accidents I have ever had were after driving too long in a day.
On that model with a more reasonable 10-hour charge, the necessary charging rate is about 9KW - still a heavy cable, but with a socket about the size and complexity of the sort used for portable machines in factories and for boat shorepower.
Just don't try to use your wind turbine. In our location, to run my small car on its current, fairly low usage cycle, I would need a 6M diameter turbine on a 40M pylon, and I suspect the neighbours would object.
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That would be a very small turbine. Why not go for something like this one [vestas.com], 82m diameter with a 59m tower? That should power a few cars, and it's a good mid-size turbine for use in areas where you cannot depend on a strong, regular wind. Place it half a mile or more from houses, of course, otherwise
Is lithium really the best idea for cars? (Score:2)
But while lithiums handle deep discharge much better than lead-acid batteries, they're still not as good as NiCad or NiMh. They're also a lot more expensive. And, probably the best argument against them... look at the fires that happen when laptop (or even CELL PHONE) lithium cells are damaged or shorted. Now, imagine a car packing a thousand times more getting in an accident...
Shame on GM (Score:2)
Probably 80% of the cars I see on the road during that drive are commuting less than a hundred miles round trip.
To date, I've seen exactly one EV-1 on the road.
It was about five years ago that I saw my first Prius on the road. It was two yea
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I recall walking along a street in LA back around 2000 or 2001 and in the corner of my eye I saw a silent car roll up on my left. I turned to look at what it was and saw it was an EV-1. It was beautiful, and broke my heart a little, since GM had already made it clear the EV-1 was on its way out.
I've got a fairly efficient 7 year old 2dr hatchback with manual transmission which I only drive for trips and groceries and the like ( since I walk to work ). It's got 55k miles on it, and my hope/goal is to put a
Ultracaps a long way off, maybe never. (Score:2)
Power densities (KW/Kg) for electric cars are all but irrelevant for current technologies. All power density reflects is how fast you can discharge. For any battery containing sufficient energy density, there will be adequate power density. Any time you see power density being highlighted it is a red herring attempt to distract from the fa
In The Next 5 Years (Score:2)
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Re:Battery Life? (Score:4, Informative)
It could mean that, but that isn't what is meant here. It can also mean that the battery can take in higher current during charge cycles and so reach the same state of charge sooner, and that the battery can release more current without failing or overheating due to its internal resistance, therefore making more energy available to the motors on demand - though yes, this latter capability does mean that the battery will be discharged sooner, given the same capacity battery, it is still better - because it can do what the old battery did (release at the old rate of charge) if that is what you want - but it can also give you more of a power surge for passing, towing, accelerating, getting out of (or into) trouble, etc.
Also, because a higher safe rate of discharge usually implies a lower internal resistance, it means that the battery wastes less energy when delivering current to a client device - the more internal resistance a battery has, the more heat is generated as a direct power loss, so most higher-current capable batteries tend to be a little better in this regard.
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Doesn't that mean the battery life has gone down? I thought that was a bad thing. Can someone please explain?
"battery life" is measured in ampere-hours (Ah) and is the measure of how many hours it'd take to discharge a fully charged battery at a current draw of 1A. So a battery with 20Ah capacity will allow 20 hours of use at a current draw of 1A. Note that this is never an accurate measurement as voltage levels of the battery fluctuate depending on charge level and different levels of current draw will result in different battery capacities. A 20Ah battery discharged at 1A will provide more energy than the same
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Also, electric motors are limited by the voltage that goes into them, if these new batteries have a higher discharge rates, we could see more stories about electric cars beating gasoline equivalents in time t
Re:Next best thing since... [parent troll?] (Score:2, Informative)
Watch out, your computer screen is surrounded by something called reality. Common-sense may come in handy should you chose to visit it sometime.
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What on earth are you talking about? I know where to get electricity. And since hybrids still ultimately run on gasoline, I know where to get gasoline. Where is the hydrogen production and distribution system for my friendly local hydrogen station you are advocating?
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1. fast recharge isn't needed if driving range becomes long enough (say 300 to 500 miles)
2. electric cars pollute much less than gasoline cars, due to their energy efficiency
3. tens of millions of electrics can be charged using off-peak power without building any new power plants
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5kkU23bfEc [youtube.com]
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2. Electric cars have potentially a much longer service life than gasoline-powered cars, due to the simplicity of the electric motor. If the car lasts twice as long, then the "dust to dust" energy consumption (per mi
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If the car is fully electric it requires A LOT of new infrastructure (which is especially problematic in big open spaces where caves are more common than your "modern world")
If the car is a hybrid it's simply less efficient than diesel at the moment. Advances in battery power will improve efficiency, but it will not remove the need for petrol.
I see nothing wrong with electric cars, but with the current state of technology +5 years is not going to bring a
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